


The Hound

by qualapec



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Dog(s), Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post Reichenbach, Recovery, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-25
Updated: 2012-01-25
Packaged: 2017-10-30 02:48:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/326929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qualapec/pseuds/qualapec
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is all alone in the flat, and the quiet hurts too much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hound

John woke up, and tried to pretend there wasn’t a small part of him that was disappointed to be alive.

It took him a while to roll out of bed, and when he did, he had to stop and massage the phantom ache in his knee, constantly near the surface. He ate a small meal and made tea. In the kitchen, boxes full of delicate glassware needed to be sidestepped. He tried not to think about how odd it was to see the breakfast bar empty. There were stains on the counter from chemical activities gone awry and no amount of Mrs. Hudson’s scrubbing would take them out, but they could have just as easily been pencil scuffs or spilled coffee. After eating, he rinsed his dishes and mug and placed them in the dishwasher.

Accidentally, he caught himself meandering back towards his chair. Mrs. Hudson had cleaned up the kitchen, but the sitting room was left almost entirely unchanged. John took his chair, and sinking into the cushions reminded him of how heavy his bones felt. He sighed, and his eyes drifted from the computer (so many messages of sympathy from Sherlock’s supporters and fans; he didn’t want to read them yet), which rested next to the violin.

Nobody thought it was healthy for him. They said he was dwelling in the past…but John couldn’t help but steal a few moments each day where he could close his eyes and pretend things were the way they used to be.

He pressed his fingers into his temples.

How did things get _so_ very fucked up _so_ quickly?

Whenever he started seeing his friend plummet to the ground behind his closed eyes and felt the raw sutures in his gut wrenching free, he realized it was time to go in to see if there’s any work for him at the clinic.

His third patient was a little girl who needed stitches. She’d cried bitterly, buried her face into her momma’s shoulder while he started working on the long gash from a playground accident, at the second stitch, her tears had stopped and she craned her neck around to watch, oddly curious by the procedure. Then it was over, and she shot him a huge beaming smile and told him she wanted to be a vet. It made his day. He’d always been fond of children.

The lowlight came in the form of a woman.

Much to his chagrin, the entire conversation ended with, “Madame, I’m sorry, but the pills go in your _mouth_.” He missed the women in the military. He never ended up having conversations like that with them.

After work, he went to the gym. The phantom pain in his leg, like the unbearable grief that tugged at the edges of his consciousness, was always threatening to return in full force. Exercise gave him something to do; it was kinetic and it kept him feeling like he was moving forward, even as everything slipped back.

Then he suffered the idea of going back to the flat – the flat without a flatmate, the flat that was too quiet. He would eat a small dinner and take a sleeping pill and go to bed at seven so he didn’t have to be alone with his thoughts and his leg for very long. Maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t wake up tomorrow.

John sighed and hailed a taxi home.

~~~

The next morning, he woke up, ate breakfast, and sat in his armchair. There was no clinic duty, and he was faced with a day where his schedule was empty, that gave him nothing to focus on except the things he didn’t wish to think about.

It was too quiet.

Mrs. Hudson was coming up the stairs. “You would not believe the day I’ve had. I was at the market, minding my own business, when this lady starts arguing with one of the grocers. To be fair, I know why she was upset. I’ve never met a bagger who didn’t know you don’t put the eggs on the bottom, but she got rather vehement about the whole thing.”

“It’s too quiet,” John whispered.

“What was that?” Mrs. Hudson asked as she put the groceries on the counter.

“It’s too quiet!” John’s voice was louder, and he pushed himself off the chair, marching for the door. He smiled at Mrs. Hudson as he left, as if he’d just come to some brilliant conclusion. She watched him leave, utterly confused.

He practically bounced down the stairs and hailed a cab.

He went to the nearest animal shelter.

The woman, a volunteer in a blue polo shirt, glanced up as soon as he walked in. He went through the pleasantries, for the first time in a long time, genuinely feeling pleasant. “So, what are you looking for?”

“A dog,” he answered simply, then realized he should probably elaborate, “for companionship.”

“All right, what kind of dog?”

“I’m not too particular, to be honest. ‘Chick magnet’ isn’t a breed, I don’t think…” At the look on her face, he rapidly added, “That was a joke! Something…good tempered, with an even personality. I live in a flat so, probably not a big one. But I’m active, so not one that’s too small.”

“You say you live in a flat. Will your landlord be okay with you having a dog?”

A thousand images flashed through his mind, of experiments and heads in the fridge and a dummy hanging from a noose on the ceiling. “I don’t think she’ll have a problem with it.”

“I’m afraid we’ll need written confirmation…”

“My late friend once shot six holes in her wall because he was bored. She didn’t glance twice at it,” he leaned in. “Believe me when I say I don’t think she’ll mind.”

The volunteer smiled, and refrained from asking him why his friend was late. John let her draw her own conclusions. “Okay, I’ll just go ahead and say you’re a homeowner.”

She asked a few more questions, and he answered as honestly as he could. “Dr. Watson,” she offered once they reached the end, “I really hate to ask, but it is important…you mentioned that your friend died recently. I _cannot_ stress that a dog is not something you should get on an impulse.”

“I’ve been thinking about it for a while. When I was in the military,” he began, “a bomb-sniffing dog saved the squad I was with. That dog’s handler was closer with that beast than I’ve been with most people in my life.” He didn’t talk about the other animals, the unofficial pets that the soldiers fed at the camp that brought that little bit of civilian life into the service. “I’m not getting a dog for myself, I’m getting a dog because I know there are things that need me and because I need something to break up the-” He trailed off, the corner of his mouth twitched in a smile before he realized that he didn’t want to smile, that he was serious. “It hurts to be alone.” He nodded curtly, and hoped it explained everything. “I’m getting a dog because I need a friend badly right now, but I promise that I’m not being selfish. Do you understand?”

She nodded, and he saw the understanding there. Besides, it wasn’t like they could be picky. “Our kennels are open from morning to evening every day. Final adoptions are processed thirty minutes before closing. Go on back and pick someone out whenever you’re ready.”

~~~

Two hours later, a seven year old Beagle named Webley was planted onto the hardwood floors, short claws clicking and short legs flopping with the first couple steps. John set him down then stood and crossed his arms while Webley walked around the flat, sniffing the new environment, a proud little smile on his face while he put the bag of food in the cupboard and Webley came running over to investigate. John patted him on the head. “It’s not dinnertime yet.”

He got out the tiny rubber ball he’d gotten at the pet store and tossed it. Webley chased it, slipping on the floors to catch up, but he had no previous experience with fetch, so he just flopped down on the floor and chewed.

Mrs. Hudson almost said something when she smelled the dog, but then she saw John holding the beast while he watched television and _smiling_ and she lost her heart. After everything he’d been through, she wasn’t going to be the one to take it away from him. She was too old and had lived through too much to care dramatically, because she knew how important it was to find something to bring you out of yourself when you needed to move on. It was no coincidence she’d let Sherlock rent the flat after her husband died.

John had forgotten how much fun it was to hold a dog and watch a good mystery program. It felt like things didn’t matter so much. He could focus on the dog’s breathing, he could see the things he’d seen a million times before through the dog’s excitement, and the reaction made everything new and exciting for him.

“I think the butler did it,” he told Webley, who looked up when he heard People speaking, licking at John’s mouth and nose. In response, he massaged the back of the dog’s head. “It does happen sometimes, you know.”

~~~

Sherlock leaned his head back and growled. He’d reached a dead end in his investigation into one Sebastian Moran – the last link he needed to clear his name and make being alive safe for him again.

Until then, he was trapped in the nightmare of interior decorating that was Dr. Molly Hooper’s apartment. He’d done his best to establish nests of black and white, but she had shown miraculous ability to subvert such measures with brilliant splashes of color. But she continued to be sweet, and continued to give him more than society told him she owed him, so he didn’t press the issue. Without her, he would doubtlessly be dead in an incredibly permanent sense.

Being unable to be seen in public had refined his skills in the art of disguise, but some days there were simply no ways to safely gather information himself, and on those days he did his best to stay busy in her apartment without resorting to being destructive; it was the hardest thing he’d ever needed to do.

He was also truly, irrevocably, painfully bored. He had to be _nice_. He had to be _quiet_. Sometimes he felt like his bones and organs were going to vibrate their way out of his skin or the pressure behind his eyes was going to make them pop right out of his head.

On the days when he could do nothing but sit and wait, he spent most of his time playing the piano (when he wasn’t getting the high score gaming on her Xbox, the 360 model - a gift from a former, affluent boyfriend from his understanding. He wouldn’t admit to enjoying it so much, but it was the first thing he was going to demand he and John get when everything was back to normal).  He’d known he was in trouble on the first day when he’d read through all the books she had that looked even marginally interesting. He invented a dance. He made a game of walking on the furniture while Molly was away. He watched all the horrible television that was on during the day, and there was an entire notebook of scratched-out notes to John that he’d started and never finished, rationalizing that it was too dangerous to send them.

He felt like he was pacing his cage. There were rules and boundaries and he felt constricted, claustrophobic. If anyone were to ask, he knew exactly how many hardwood floor boards there were, he’d calculated the threads in the carpets, his nails were bit down to nothing, and he would stand up and move and walk back and forth constantly, waiting, hoping for a breakthrough so he could get out there and return to the _hunt_. There were countless newspaper clippings from strange deaths and murders – and an entire classification system, from those he’d already solved to the ones that interested him. He kept them in a box, nice, contained, desperately trying not to let it seep too much into Molly’s life, because he needed to.

He heard Molly coming through the door, and he took great efforts to hide his activities by shoving the controller under the cushions and changing the channel to something educational. He knew it took her exactly 47 seconds to open the door, put her keys in the bowl on the nightstand, and hang up her coat.

Molly walked in. Sherlock was in the kitchen, he held up two identical, steaming mugs with labeled strings hanging out the sides. “Tea?”

She looked surprised, but took the one in his left hand, “Thank you…Sherlock.” She glanced around; she knew. “You weren’t bored today?”

He feigned a smile to hide the fact that he half expected to drop dead, he was moving so slowly.

“I occupied my time being good and non-destructive. What else could I do?” Although he was truly putting in his best effort to being a good roommate, he couldn’t wait until he was back in his home and he could wreak some proper havoc and stop pretending he was a polite person. But not being polite hurt Molly, and without Molly his brilliant brain would be a smear on the sidewalk, so he didn’t want to hurt her.  Plus, he wasn’t sure how much of _him_ she would tolerate before tossing him out, and this was the best situation he was likely to get under the circumstances. It was his understanding that that was how people usually interacted in a living situation. People that weren’t him and John.

“Ah. Still playing _Call of Duty_ , then?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he offered, taking a sip, “I mastered that game weeks ago. The fellow players on the network have rendered themselves inferior.”

Softly, quietly, she tried to hide her smile behind her cup of tea. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “I saw John today.” A moment afterwards, she realized she wasn’t sure Sherlock wanted to hear about John, and probably shouldn’t have sounded so happy about seeing him.

The false grin faded slightly, but didn’t fall, but she saw the way his eyes sharpened and hardened much in the same way a collie spies a stray sheep. “How is dear Dr. Watson.”

Her responding smile was even faker than his, and it dropped even faster. “He’s doing fine.”

“You’re hiding something.” He dropped the pretense, voice sharp, and Molly was starkly reminded of the way he usually behaved. “Don’t even try lying to me. You know you can’t.”

“He, ah,” she offered slightly, running a finger over the rim of the mug. “He got a dog.”

Sherlock was very careful not to let his face slip. “Oh,” he said.

 “You’re not…mad.”

“Of course not. Why would I be?” He was stalking slowly towards the window, and cast a careful glance down onto the street. He constantly made a point to check. It also had the benefit of putting his back to her, so she couldn’t see his face. Molly knew, and allowed him that privacy. “What kind is it?”

Her grin broadened again. “It’s a beagle. Sweet little thing. John’s happier than I’ve seen him in a long time.”

Sherlock kept staring out at the street, suddenly quiet. The storm of chaos that he constantly felt brewing under his skin went silent with surprise. For some reason, and he felt stupid for it in retrospect, he’d never considered the possibility that John would change anything in his absence.

“Sherlock…?”

“Oh,” his voice sounded somewhere between hollow and fond and concerned and glad, not that he would admit it. “It would be a hound.” He laughed at his own joke, because it was funny to him that John would want a hound after the Baskerville incident and it effectively hid the coil of tension in his chest. “They’re simple and needy and they smell like cheese. It’s the perfect dog for John.”

He didn’t mind change, he needed it constantly, but he hated watching it happen without him.


End file.
